Fata Morgana

The storm which had followed the higher range, was now in our front; sporting as with fierce joy, amid the mountain tops. Suddenly, with a crash, as of a mountain of rock torn asunder, lightning revealed through a vista of black and magnificently wild array of clouds, Mount Pike,—splendent with the glare, but simple, serene, sublime amid the chaos of elemental war. Like a fata morgana, turned to stone. 

I was speechless with delight.
It had stirred up Frank. I heard him repeating:

"—Oh night,
And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
Of a dark eye in woman! Far along,
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among
Leaps the live thunder!"

"Scenes Beyond the Western Border," Southern Literary Messenger 17 (May 1853): 314; and (with significant revisions) Scenes and Adventures in the Army

For an instant, the tranced boat's crew stood still; then turned. "The ship? Great God, where is the ship?" Soon they through dim, bewildering mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous Fata Morgana; only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed by infatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the pagan harpooneers still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea. And now, concentric circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its crew, and each floating oar, and every lance-pole, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all round and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of the Pequod out of sight.

(Moby-Dick, 1851)